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ON THE CLASSIFICATION OP BIRDS, 



might be tolerated from a desire to acknowledge the 

 ability with which these excellent artists have illustrated 

 this particular group. We may now pass to those 

 rules which more particularly regard specific names. 



(198.) Specific names may be occasionally derived 

 from the geographic range of the species, provided it is 

 peculiar. — Geographic names have been reprobated by 

 some botanists ; but we do not think, if they are judi- 

 ciously used, that they are otherwise than excellent. 

 Thus, when only one species of a group, as in Troglo- 

 dytes, is found in Europe, what name would be more 

 characteristic than Europceus ? and to another, which is 

 its prototype, but found beneath the tropics, JEquinoc- 

 tialis is particularly appropriate. To the species of 

 certain natural genera or groups, which are all inhabit- 

 ants of one country, such names of course are never to 

 be given ; and when a species has been so designated 

 by the old writers, we think its name should be can- 

 celled. Thus, the whole of the Meliphagidce being 

 peculiar to Australia, — a fact not formerly known, — the 

 old specific name of Nova Hollandia, applied to one of 

 the species, independent of its faultiness in other re- 

 spects, is quite inadmissible. These two instances of 

 the opposite characters of geographic names will show 

 the care necessary in their use. 



(199.) A specific name should be short, unlike the 

 generic, and always an adjective, unless it commemo- 

 rates* a naturalist, — Those specific names are per- 

 haps the best which denote some particular habit ; but 

 those are the most expressive which indicate a property 

 that can be seen both in the live and the dead bird. 

 Thus Orpheus polyglottos is excellent as applied to the 

 American mock-thrush ; but no one who saw the species 

 for the first time in a museum could trace any connec- 

 tion between the bird and this name. And in the same 

 way no person could imagine why a little bird, smaller 



H * Dr. Smith suggests two sorts of these names in botanical nomenclature : 

 those terminating in ana may serve to commemorate the finder of a 

 species, while the genitive case may be used for those who founded the 

 genus. 



